Imagine the consternation when on Thursday the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, thrust wide its doors and ushered into the Last Chance Saloon the entire population of Britain. In fact, he may have meant to say England, since that's where the riots took place, but that's still a whopping 53 million people in a place which has been filling up dangerously fast. Such occasions were once sporadic, as in 1989, when David Mellor famously warned that the British press was now "drinking in the Last Chance Saloon". But this year has seen whole swarms of new entrants. In the judgment of the Wall Street Journal, the population of Greece (around 10 million). According to the Daily Express, the euro. The Labour party, on the testimony of a yes campaign pamphlet by Dr Matt Qvortrup of Cranfield University, should the alternative vote be rejected. Whole football teams, as nominated on sports pages – to be joined, we suspect, by Sven-Göran Eriksson soon, if Leicester City keep losing. A pub in Newmarket and another in Twyford, according to local newspapers; both were threatened with losing their licences. Happily the Last Chance Saloon in Newbury, like the inspiration for this whole institution, a Californian tavern where a "wet" zone bordered a "dry" one, is safely outside that category. Yet if trends continue, we fear that the rate of admission may soon reach the previously unthinkable point where the Last Chance Saloon itself may be found propping up the bar at the Last Chance Saloon.